1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication request processing system, communication request processing method, and communication request processing apparatus. More particularly, it relates to a communication request processing system, communication request processing method, and communication request processing apparatus for receiving connection requests from a plurality of originators in relation to a plurality of communication requests directed to a specific subscriber.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, if a large number of calls directed to a specific subscriber arrive from a plurality of originators, it is not possible to connect all of them. A large number of calls can come into a holding apparatus which holds specific information, for example in relation to purchasing of tickets for sports events such as baseball, football, or the like or concerts.
When calls are made to specific information, conventional communications network services do not use cut-through operations, which involve dynamically rerouting the calls and changing connection conditions in cooperation with so-called service control points in the terminology of intelligent networks. This is also true of IP (Internet Protocol)-based communications networks.
A system is known which allows users to find service providing facilities easily via the Internet (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-306742 (Abstract)). This system posts information including selected attributes of users in an electronic bulletin board format on communications terminal on the side of the facilities.
When a large number of connections are made with a holding apparatus which holds specific information as described above, a problem of degraded connection quality arises because junctions with a public communications network become congested.
It is considered that in the future, there will be more than one traffic source as viewed from a holding apparatus which uses a specific transport protocol (e.g., IP) for connection. For example, there will be an interconnection between a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and IP network using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Consequently, an attempt at simple traffic control at the IP level will complicate interworking when returning appropriate information to the calling party and limits the means of taking service-specific actions with respect to the calling party. IP-based networks prescribe various techniques for guaranteeing QoS (Quality of Service) using the IP layer itself or an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) layer. In that case, however, the information holding apparatus must perform moment-by-moment control taking a total traffic amount into consideration.
The present invention has been made to overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art. Its object is to provides a communication request processing system, communication request processing method, and communication request processing apparatus which can make effective use of the public networks or the like by extracting part of a large volume of traffic and making the total volume of traffic dynamically adjustable.